


This doesn't end well

by ECrumley



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ECrumley/pseuds/ECrumley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This won't end well.” Stiles says it while pulling his shirt over his head and kicking off his Converses. Derek is about to respond, but there's Stiles, that smile quirking his long mouth, easing open his belt, and what's there to say? It probably won't end well, but Derek's been thinking about the way Stiles blushes, low on his cheeks.</p>
<p>  <i>Or</i></p>
<p>Fifty ways to lose your lover</p>
<p><i>Or</i> </p>
<p>Let's see how many Sterek tropes we can hit in one story</p>
            </blockquote>





	This doesn't end well

 

“This won't end well.” Stiles says it while pulling his shirt over his head and kicking off his Converses. Derek is about to respond, but there's Stiles, that smile quirking his long mouth, easing open his belt, and what's there to say? It probably won't end well, but Derek's been thinking about the way Stiles blushes, low on his cheeks. The way he'd look on his back, hair mussed and eyes half-closed. Derek's been imagining pressing Stiles's long limbs into stillness, so he wraps a hand around Stiles's hip—a shiver, a tracery of goosebumps—and pulls him close. “I don't care how it ends,” he says an inch from Stiles's mouth, and from the way Stiles kisses him, neither does he.

~

 

There's blood, everywhere, so much of it: Derek knows he wasn't hurt that badly which means—“No, no, no”—Stiles's head is flopping unnaturally against his shoulder and Derek wants to wipe away the blood that's trickling from his mouth but he can't move his hands from where they're holding Stiles together.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He had kept the pack small—not even a pack, really, Peter had sneered—thinking that if they just stayed under the radar, if there were no more murders, disappearances, mutilations...he wasn't his mother, he knew that, but that didn't mean...surely Derek could have this. Just this: this small town, this fragile peace, this moment of stillness.

And at first, it seemed like he might be right. Things stayed quiet, quiet enough that it was safe, harmless, even, to let a few Omegas winter in Beacon Hills, run in the forest—they're like rats, Peter had said: you don't _feed_ them, Derek, you destroy the _nest,_ and Peter had been right. Derek had gotten complacent, had spent the winter tracing the lines of Stiles's throat with his tongue, waking up curled in the furthest corner of his bed while Stiles sprawled in its center and a dozen hungry wolves started to think that there might be a power vacuum in Beacon Hills, that there might be room at the top.

 

“Derek? Derek!” Allison, stumbling into the clearing. Derek doesn't answer: if they don't find him, if he can just stay here in the dark with Stiles still warm under his hands—liminal space, Stiles had called it, one morning when they'd both woken up before the alarm clock, when he'd pulled the covers over their heads and slipped a knee between Derek's thighs—but the air erupts in light and noise. Allison sounds like she's crying, but her hands are steady as she searches for arteries to tie off, applies pressure. Scott is desperate, saying something about the bite, “give him the bite, Derek,” but it's too late “It's too late,” says Lydia, “Scott, it's too late.”

And that's how it ends.

~

 

“Allison and I have, you know, an arrangement.” Scott is panting up the hill behind him. “She can see people while she's at school” Allison is at Dartmouth; Scott is taking some classes at the community college, “and I can, you know—just nothing serious. Just while she's away.” They reach the crest, breathe, look over the town. Their town. “Did you and Stiles—“

“No.” Derek thinks about turning the question around: _Shouldn't you know? Isn't he your best friend?_ But whatever's gone wrong between Scott and Stiles is probably Derek's fault, anyway.

“Berkeley's not so far,” Scott says.

“Right,” Derek says.

 

Stiles comes back for Thanksgiving, and he comes back different. Smells different: cigarettes, marijuana. Old books, or maybe that's just mildew. Unfamiliar detergent. He's settled against his bones, quiet under his skin: maybe it's the pot, or maybe it's spending time someplace where his life isn't actively endangered, where his friends don't sprout claws and fangs and periodically try to kill him.

Maybe this is just how Stiles is when he's happy.

 

Stiles catches Derek in the kitchen. Peter had asked if Derek planned to throw a party: “In honor of the holiday—the harvest; nature's bounty and so on—as well as the glorious reunion of your little band,” sneering, sarcastic. But Isaac thought it sounded like a good idea, and now here's Stiles, leaning against the counter. “Hey, you.”

Stiles has been drinking: he's awkward with it, flushed, not sure what to do with his mouth, and Derek can see how it will play out: they'll fuck when Stiles is home. It won't be awkward because it wouldn't occur to Stiles that it should be. He'll be friendly, chatty; Derek will get to see the other people he sleeps with reflected in the way he uses his body, and for a moment, he lets himself imagine it: driving himself into Stiles, teeth at the back of his neck, asking “Does anyone else make you feel like this,” pinning Stiles by the wrists until he gasps “No—no one,” leaving marks under his clothes.

And then Stiles will meet someone. Or he'll get a summer internship in New York, or spend a semester in Madrid, or get a job offer in Seattle, and he'll come back to Beacon Hills less and less, and Stiles is saying “I've been thinking,” but Derek interrupts.

“I have to go—I have” a date? Too obvious “to meet someone.” Good. Subtle. “It's good to see you, Stiles.” Derek grips his shoulder, willing the gesture to be fraternal. “Take care of yourself.” He walks away.

~

 

The funeral is excruciating. That is, Derek imagines that the funeral is excruciating: he doesn't go, but Scott comes over afterward. It's a nice gesture, probably. He'd given the Sheriff a ride home, must have joined him for a drink, because he smells like scotch. Like scotch, like the starch in his good suit ( _did your mother buy you a suit, a new suit for Stiles's funeral_ ),like loneliness, like sex—well, it was one way to grieve. Derek had spent the morning with his face buried in his sheets, seeking out some scent, some hint of Stiles.

A car crash. A fucking car crash: wet leaves on the road, Stiles probably in a hurry to be somewhere, probably driving too fast, not that anyone's saying that. No one is saying much of anything: Scott is inarticulate with grief. Derek is just inarticulate.

They sit in silence, but Derek knows it won't last. Scott is building up to something, finally smashes a fist down, splintering the table, the words wrenched out of him: “It's— _stupid_ and _mortal_ ,” which makes Derek laugh, because does Scott know that he's quoting Stiles quoting Buffy?

Scott's fist hits his jaw, drives him to the ground before he can explain what, exactly, the fuck is so funny. Maybe he'll die from this, he thinks, as Scott smashes his head against the floor, maybe this will be the end.

~

 

“I don't know why you waited so long to give him the bite.” Peter's drawling, sitting on the stairs in the loft when Derek drags himself in, half-healed. “Or, wait, do I?” He stands, graceful, and Derek hates him for it. “Did you think that maybe Stiles wouldn't need you anymore if you weren't stronger than him? Did you think that he only wanted you because he needed you to protect him?”

Derek doesn't answer, limps into the shower and turns on the water, pretends he can't hear Peter ask “Were you right?”

~

 

The spell works. The spell definitely works. “Good to know,” Derek mutters, but speaking sets off a cascade of pain. The last lichen had gotten close, gotten a hand, a long-fingered, decomposing hand, on him before it burst apart in the wave of light. Derek's own fault. Stupid. He would have to tell Stiles that; given half a chance Stiles would blame himself.

And here's Stiles, as if he's been summoned. The thought makes Derek smile, or try: if he had the ability to summon Stiles by thinking about him, the last six months would have been

Stiles is saying something, talking too fast for Derek to understand; touching Derek, gently, probably, Stiles is gentle with him _runs a hand down his spine, “Christ, you're so, Derek, I want”_ but it hurts anyway. Everything hurts.

He grabs Stiles's wrist: the runes Stiles had spent hours inking onto his arms are broken now, fading, their power used up. He summons reserves of strength: “Stiles. You did so good.” _You're so good, Stiles says, his voice broken, and Derek is shaking with the effort of holding back, moving slow._

“Hey, hey, don't—just,” Stiles is using his index finger and Derek's blood to trace symbols over Derek's wounds, but Derek should tell him not to bother: healing spells don't work on werewolves, “just hold on while I—” 

It's okay, Derek wants to say. It's good to be the one who leaves, for a change.

~

 

“Come on—don't tell me you want to teach teenagers history all day and then come home to an eye rolling, gum popping ingrate of your own.” Stiles can usually be teased out of this conversation. Failing that he can be fucked out of it, and Derek is ready to try that next: he leans against Stiles, wrapping an arm across his chest, slipping a hand down his stomach, kissing his neck. At thirty, Stiles is lean rather than lanky, finally grown into his shoulders. His mouth hasn't changed, though: it's tight, verging on angry, as he pulls away, faces Derek.

“Yeah, I do want one, actually. And I know,” Stiles sighs, softens, reaches for Derek, “I know you're all fucked up about family, and, hey, for good reason, but, at the risk of going all _When Harry Met Sally_ on you, and, while we're on the topic, I'd like to point out that, contrary, perhaps, to expectations, I am clearly the Harry and you, the Sally in this relationship,” Stiles pauses for breath, and Derek suppresses a smile because Stiles hates to be laughed at, but it's going to be okay. They're going to be okay. They've been together for almost thirteen years, lived together for eight, faced down all manner of natural and supernatural threats. Derek knows at least seven places he can kiss Stiles that render him speechless and when Derek wakes up sweaty and shaking from a nightmare Stiles rubs the back of his neck until he can go back to sleep; in the face of all that, what's—“I want a family.” Stiles is serious, intent, still. “With you. I want a family with you.” A deep breath. “And if you can't do that, I understand, I do, but then I don't think I can do...this.”

There are a thousand things Derek should say, wants to say. _I'm sorry_ or _You're right, I'm definitely Sally_ or _Please don't leave me._ But instead he says, “Well, this is fucking mundane,” and Stiles laughs or sobs and closes the distance between them. It's been months, maybe a year, since they fooled around anywhere but their bedroom or the shower but Stiles fucks him against the counter, taking his time with it so Derek is ragged, panting and shaking by the time Stiles jerks him off with long, assured strokes and comes, shuddering. _No one else knows me like this_ , Derek thinks, resting his forehead on the cool surface of the counter. _No one else will ever know me like this._ And: _I will not let this end._

But it does anyway.

~

 

Why you would build a labyrinth under City Hall is beyond Derek, but by the time he reaches its center he's too tired to even be angry at the founders of Beacon Hill. Stiles must have taken another route: Derek picks up his scent, overlaid with the acrid, burnt-hair demon smell he's gotten to know too well over the last few weeks, and finds the energy to be angry again.

The thing that's wearing Stiles's face laughs, curls clawed fingers delightedly around a mouth impossibly full of teeth. “Oh,” it says, its voice high and icy, stepping delicately around the half-finished salt circle, “this doesn't end well, does it?”

It's wearing Stiles's face, so Derek rips it off. 

~

 

Stiles is still kicking off his Converses, stepping out of his jeans when Derek closes the distance between them. He shouldn't be doing this, he's too fast and too strong, too dangerous, too old and too damaged to be doing this. Stiles deserves a nice life, a long life, but Derek's been thinking about him anyway: his big hands, the curve of his spine when he slouches. His lower lip. What his hair would feel like between Derek's fingers. The way he looks at Derek from below lowered lashes, half-smiles, says, “This won't end well.” Derek wraps a hand around the back of Stiles's neck, meets his eyes. “Who says it ends?” He can feel Stiles grin against his mouth.


End file.
